Large diamond stones are very highly desirable in the wholesale and retail areas of the jewelry industry. From both perspectives, large diamond stones are very expensive and can be extremely difficult to find. From the manufacturer's perspective, performing work, such as cutting, on large gemstones can be a difficult task. Large gemstones can be difficult to handle in terms of their bulkiness. Furthermore, if stones are damaged during such cutting, the value of the large gemstone diminishes dramatically.
In the past, due to these concerns, the jewelry industry took a different approach. Instead of using only large gemstones, jewelers have tried to imitate the large diamond look. Manufacturers have been using numerous smaller, cheaper gemstones and cluster the small stones together in a manner to resemble the appearance of a large gemstone. As a result of this, manufacturers have sought out cheaper and less labor-intensive solutions.
The prior art provides alternative ways to achieve the large gemstone appearance. The prior art provides a means to set clusters of small stones together to achieve the large gemstone look. Additionally, some cluster settings have larger and smaller stones set at different planes with the upper stones bearing on and holding the lower stones in place. These smaller, individual gemstones are sometimes set with prongs, which is a time consuming process to hold the lower stones in place. When the smaller lower stones merely rest in place when upper stones are being set, the lower stones can slip making the setting process difficult.
Even though the prior art has various methodologies to create the look of a large gemstone by clustering small gemstones set by prongs, there are too many prongs employed, and the clean gemstone look is compromised. Invisible setting having upper stones bearing on lower stones has been one solution, but such a technique is flawed with stones bearing on each other hiding too much stone surface for such supporting functions, and perhaps not being secure enough to prevent the stones from falling out of the settings, in addition to the problem identified above when the stones are being set.